The Word of the Day

wetware \WET-wair\ noun : the human brain or a human being considered especially with respect to human logical and computational capabilities

Example sentence: With the right wetware at the helm, the company should be able to turn a sizeable profit.

Did you know? When the computer terms "software" and "hardware" sprang to life in the mid-20th century, a surge of visions and inventions using the new technology immediately followed... along with a revival of the combining form "ware." An early coinage was "wetware," which began circuiting techie circles in the 1970s as a name for the software installed by Mother Nature (a.k.a. the brain). Other "ware" names for people and their noggins have made a blip in our language -- for example, "meatware" and "liveware" -- but none have become firmly established in the general lexicon like "wetware."

The Word of the Day

hemidemisemiquaver \hem-ih-dem-ih-SEM-ih-kway-ver\ noun : a musical note with the time value of 1/64 of a whole note : sixty-fourth note

Example sentence: The pianist's fingers became a blur flying over the keys as she played the difficult hemidemisemiquavers of the allegro movement.

Did you know? Hemidemisemiquavers are the fastest musical notes that are commonly played, and performing them well can stretch human technique to its limit. The term is mainly used in Britain, where eighth notes are called "quavers," sixteenth notes are called "semiquavers," and thirty-second notes are called "demisemiquavers." In the United States, "hemidemisemiquaver" is likely to be used humorously, occurring especially as a clever substitute for "moment" or "bit," as in "the concert ended not a hemidemisemiquaver too soon."

Meme from Chloe's Spot

1. The phone rings; whom do you want it to be? Bill Gates saying I've been chosen to have half his fortune
2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart? without hesitation
3. If you had to kiss again the last person you kissed, would you? sure
4. Do you take compliments well? gosh, it's been so long
5. Do you play Sudoku? 7 games every day
6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive? no problem (as long as I have an endless source of power for the wheelchair battery)
7. Do you like nipple rings? no
8. Did you ever go to camp as a kid? No, never. But my father always took us kids "roughing it" for a couple weeks each summer.
9. If a sexy person were pursuing you, but you knew he/she were married what would you do? I would be scared.
10. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you? I have.
11. Do you like to pursue or be pursued? pursued without my being aware but with me thinking I was the pursuer
12. Use three words to describe yourself at the moment: 75 pounds overweight
13. Do any songs make you cry? yes
14. Are you continuing your education? I try everyday to learn something new
15. Do you know how to shoot a gun? absolutely
16. If your house were on fire, what would be the first thing you grabbed? cell phone to call fire department
17. Who was the last person you shared a bed with? H.
18. Whom do you text the most? I don't text.
19. Favorite children’s books? Tintin by Herg
20. What do you buy at the movies? big tub o'buttered popcorn
21. Do you know how to play poker? not very well
22. Do you wear your seat belt? Always

Click Chloe's links found in sidebar

USA Dependent Areas

American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island
note: from 18 July 1947 until 1 October 1994, the US administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands; it entered into a political relationship with all four political units: the Northern Mariana Islands is a commonwealth in political union with the US (effective 3 November 1986); the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 21 October 1986); the Federated States of Micronesia signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 3 November 1986); Palau concluded a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 1 October 1994)

The Word of the Day

wallah \WAH-luh\ noun : a person who is associated with a particular work or who performs a specific duty or service -- usually used in combination

Example sentence: "Location, location and location. That's what it's all about, trumpet the real-estate wallahs." (Tony Baker, _The Advertiser_, August 3, 2005)

Did you know? "Wallah" comes from the Hindi suffix "-vala," meaning "one in charge." Like its Hindi counterpart, "wallah" is commonly used in combination with other nouns. The first use of "wallah" appeared as "lootywallah" in a narrative penned by Officer Innes Munro describing his time deployed on the Coromandel Coast of India in the 1780s. "Looty," or "lootie," was a noun sometimes applied to a member of a band of marauders or robbers. In the narrative, Munro used the term to describe looting cavalrymen. In current writing, "wallah" is typically accompanied by words like "office" or "marketing."

31st Spoleto Festival USA Begins Today

A wonderful celebration of the Arts begins today in Charleston, South Carolina. click title

31st Piccolo Spoleto Opens Today

A little less expensive and enjoyed by more Charleston locals. click title

The Word of the Day

apparatchik \ah-puh-RAH-chik\ noun
1 : member of a Communist apparat
*2 : a blindly devoted official, follower, or member of an organization (as a corporation or political party)

Example sentence: The boss seemed to prefer apparatchiks to anyone with a glimmer of independent thought.

Did you know? In the context of the definition of "apparatchik" (a term English speakers borrowed from Russian), "apparat" essentially means "party machine." An "apparatchik," therefore, is a cog in the system of the Communist Party. The term is not an especially flattering one, and its negative connotations reflect the perception that some Communists were obedient drones in the great Party machine. In current use, however, a person doesn't have to be a member of the Communist Party to be called an "apparatchik"; he or she just has to be someone who mindlessly follows orders in an organization or bureaucracy.

Damn Ladybugs

click title

Once Again

I've pretty much let this blog go and am concentrating on two others. I use this merely to visit my links list. If you are there, I am keeping up.

The Word of the Day

corybantic \kor-ee-BAN-tik\ adjective : like or in the spirit of a Corybant; especially : wild, frenzied

Example sentence: From the sound of the first guitar chord, the mosh pit looked like a swarm of bees in a corybantic dance.

Did you know? The big name in goddesses in Phrygia (Asia Minor) in the fifth century B.C. was Cybele (also called Cybebe or Agdistis), the "Great Mother of the Gods." According to Oriental and Greco-Roman mythology, she was the mother of it all: gods, humans, animals ... even nature itself. The Corybants were Cybele's attendants and priests, and they worshipped her with an unrestrained frenzy of wildly emotional processions, rites, and dances. "Corybantic," the adjective based on the name of Cybele's attendants, can be used to describe anything characterized by a similarly unrestrained abandon.

The Word of the Day

jackanapes \JAK-uh-nayps\ noun
1 : monkey, ape
2 a : an impudent or conceited fellow *b : a saucy or mischievous child

Example sentence: Mr. Hughes had his neighbor's son pegged as a disrespectful jackanapes and was therefore reluctant to hire him to shovel the driveway.

Did you know? William de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk, was a well-regarded soldier and commander during the Hundred Years' War. It was during his dukedom (1448-1450), however, that England lost its possessions in northern France, and his popularity consequently suffered. The coat of arms for de la Pole's family sported an image of a collar and chain that, at the time, was commonly used for leashing pet monkeys, then known as "jackanapes" (a word whose precise origin is uncertain). By association, people gave the Duke the nickname "Jack Napis," and soon "jackanapes" took on a life of its own as a word for an impudent person and, later, a misbehaving child.

The Word of the Day

rendition \ren-DISH-un\ noun
1 : surrender
2 : translation
*3 : performance, interpretation

Example sentence: Early in her career, the singer starred in a stunning rendition of Wagner's opera _Tristan und Isolde_.

Did you know? "Rendition" entered English in the early 17th century and can be traced to the Middle French word "reddition? and ultimately to the Latin verb "reddere," meaning "to return." The English verb "render" is another descendant of "reddere," so perhaps it is no surprise that "rendition" fundamentally means "the act or result of rendering." English speakers also once adopted "reddition" itself (meaning either "restitution, surrender" or "elucidation"), but that word has mostly dropped out of use. Incidentally, if you've guessed that "surrender" is also from the same word family, you may be right; "surrender" derives in part from the Anglo-French "rendre," which likely influenced the alteration of "reddition" to "rendition."

The Word of the Day

inkhorn \INK-horn\ adjective : ostentatiously learned : pedantic

Example sentence: The professor peppered his lectures with inkhorn terms of pseudo-Latin and Greek, a practice he felt essential to instilling in his students the proper respect for his knowledge.

Did you know? Picture an ancient scribe, pen in hand, a small ink bottle made from an animal's horn strapped to his belt, ready to record the great events of history. In 14th-century England, such ink bottles were dubbed (not surprisingly) "inkhorns." During the Renaissance, learned writers often borrowed words from Latin and Greek, eschewing vulgar English alternatives. But in the 16th century, some scholars argued for the use of native terms over Latinate forms, and a lively intellectual debate over the merits of each began. Those who favored English branded what they considered ostentatious Latinisms "inkhorn terms" after the bottles carried by scholars, and since then we have used "inkhorn" as an adjective for pretentious language.

Quote

"Come to the edge, he said,
They said: We are afraid
Come to the edge, he said.
They came,
He pushed them,
and they flew."

Guillaume Apollinaire

Dalai Lama looking for answers, too

The Dalai Lama patted Yangzom F, after a traditional greeting during his visit to Smith College. (Globe Staff Photo / Dina Rudick)

He's seeking a way to motivate people

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | May 10, 2007

NORTHAMPTON -- The 14th Dalai Lama, warning that his beloved Tibet is "passing through the darkest period in our almost 2,000 years," acknowledged yesterday that he is not certain how to motivate the people of the world to care about issues he sees as threatening to humanity.

Speaking to an adoring audience of nearly 5,000 Smith and Hampshire college students, the 71-year-old monk was alternately playful and serious as he brought his message of compassion and religious tolerance to the Connecticut River Valley, an area with a small community of Tibetan refugees and a network of colleges that have embraced Buddhist studies and have for more than a decade sponsored a student exchange program with the exiled Tibetan academy.

The Dalai Lama, whose given name is Tenzin Gyatso, kept the audience laughing almost from the moment of his entrance with a black academic gown draped haphazardly over his maroon and saffron robes and a black tasseled mortarboard that he fidgeted with throughout a two-hour convocation at Smith College's Indoor Track and Tennis Facility.

Asked for child-rearing advice, the celibate monk cracked, "First, let me marry," before acknowledging that his own upbringing was a bit unusual, "because of my name, Dalai Lama."

He said his tutors kept a special yellow whip to discipline him, but added wryly, "It was a holy whip for a holy student, but I don't think there is any holy pain."

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent advocacy for the people of Tibet, also warned of the psychological dangers of unhappiness, hatred, and anger and of broader challenges, particularly that of overpopulation, which he said he views as a major issue facing humankind. The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after an invasion by China, now presides over a Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, India.

Speaking without notes and mostly in a heavily accented English, but at times through a translator, the Dalai Lama largely stuck to his oft-repeated message, which he delivers in numerous speeches around the world, about the importance of compassion. He said that education and wealth are not sufficient means to happiness, but that "warmheartedness is the key to a sustained, peaceful mind" and that "anger, hatred, jealousy, these are destroyers of a peaceful mind." He warned that technology and knowledge, unless combined with compassion, will lead to "un believable things."

He spoke repeatedly of the importance of maternal affection as a means for teaching compassionate behavior to children. He said his own father was short-tempered, but that his mother was kind and empathetic, feeling sorrow for those she encountered who ailed.

"Maximum affection to your children -- that is most important," he said, to applause, in response to a question about his advice for young families.

But he did not disavow corporal punishment for naughty children, saying "some harsh method is also necessary" but then tempering his remarks by saying, "I don't know, that's my view."

Asked "what can we do to wake up our civilization" to issues such as global warming, warfare, and religious fundamentalism, the Dalai Lama said "the real answer is, I don't know." But, he said, "I think human warmheartedness brings sense of community, sense of responsibility, and sense of concern, and the intelligence side provides us method. . . . Raise the issues, remind leaders. . . . Certainly we will find effective method if we pay sufficient attention and use our intelligence properly."

"I fully agree with these challenges, but I want to add one thing -- the population," he said. "We also have to work to reduce this gap between rich and poor. The poorer people's living standard must be raised up."

The Dalai Lama repeatedly alluded to concern about the state of the environment, particularly in Tibet, which is facing population growth facilitated by a new railway from China. Tibetans have worried that migration of Chinese into Tibet will cause Tibetans to become a minority in their homeland. The United States regards Tibet as part of China; the Dalai Lama advocates not for independence, but for greater autonomy for Tibetans within China.

The Dalai Lama exchanged white prayer scarves, called khata, with those who greeted him. At the gym, for example, he bowed as he placed scarves on the shoulders of the presidents of Smith and Hampshire colleges and allowed them to do the same for him.

The president of Smith, Carol T. Christ, gave the Dalai Lama an honorary degree, and called his visit "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," adding that one of her predecessors had first invited the spiritual leader to visit a decade ago.

The Dalai Lama arrived in Massachusetts Tuesday afternoon, flying into Westfield-Barnes Airport, and he is scheduled to depart today.

Yesterday afternoon, he met with about two-dozen Buddhist studies teachers from the Five Colleges consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, Smith and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The two-hour seminar was dominated by a discussion among professors about tensions within their field between the academic study of Buddhism and classroom discussion of meditation and other elements of practice and faith.

Today the Dalai Lama is to meet with more than 1,000 Tibetans living in New England; an estimated 138 were resettled here in the Connecticut River Valley under a special visa program that began in 1992. There are also 34 Tibetan students enrolled at the five colleges.

"This area is very receptive, and supportive of the Tibetan cause," said Thondup Tsering, the president of the Tibetan Association of Western Massachusetts.

Tsering and his wife run the only Tibetan institution in town, a restaurant called the Lhasa Cafe, but he said the community hopes to build a Tibetan Community Center.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.

The Word of the Day

atrabilious \at-ruh-BIL-yus\ adjective
1 : given to or marked by melancholy : gloomy
*2 : ill-natured, peevish

Example sentence: Conscious of his landlord's atrabilious temperament, Daniel knew to wait until the moment was right before asking for an extension on the rent.

Did you know? "Atrabilious" is a somewhat rare word with a history that parallels that of the more common "melancholy." Representing one of the four bodily humors, from which it was once believed that human emotions originated, "atrabilious" derives from the Latin "atra bilis," literally meaning "black bile." The word "melancholy" derives from the Greek "melan-" and "chole," which also translates as "black bile." In its original sense, "atrabilious" meant "melancholy," but now it is more frequently used to describe someone with an irritable or unfriendly temperament. A word with a meaning similar to that of "atrabilious" is "splenetic," which is named after the organ in the body (the spleen) once thought to secrete black bile.

The two-year contract

By DAMON DARLIN

The two-year contract. It is the bane of a cellphone owner’s existence, especially one who must have the latest hot phone at a discounted price. click title

What on earth? Database to list all named species

By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | May 9, 2007

Spurred by fears that thousands of animals, plants, and microbes will disappear from the planet before scientists can properly study them, a consortium of world-famous research institutions and funding foundations today is launching an effort to compile an enormous, computer-based "Encyclopedia of Life" to catalog every species known or found.

"For biologists, this is equivalent to the moon shot or mapping the human genome, in terms of complexity and scope," said Gary Borisy, director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in . . ." click title

How the Inca Leapt Canyons

"The Inca suspension bridges achieved clear spans of at least 150 feet, probably much greater. This was a longer span than any European masonry bridges at the time. The longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span between supports of 95 feet. And none of these European bridges had to stretch across deep canyons." click title

The Word of the Day

purloin \per-LOYN\ verb : to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust

Example sentence: Carol discovered that Mike had purloined her idea for her essay and used it in his own paper.

Did you know? "Purloin," "pilfer," and "filch" may just seem like fancy words for "steal," but each has a slightly different connotation. "Pilfer" implies stealing repeatedly in small amounts, as in this sentence: "It was months before her boss realized she was pilfering office supplies." "Filch" adds a suggestion of snatching quickly and surreptitiously (e.g., "He filched an apple from the tray"). "Purloin" stresses removing or carrying off something for one's own use or purposes ("She purloined the manuscript and tried to pass it off as her own work").

poppy quarter

WASHINGTON (AP) - The surprise explanation behind the U.S. government's sensational but false warnings about mysterious Canadian spy coins is the harmless "poppy quarter," the world's first colorized coin, The Associated Press has learned. click title

The Word of the Day

camarilla \kam-uh-RILL-uh\ noun : a group of unofficial often secret and scheming advisers; also : cabal

Example sentence: A resistance group has sprung up and is plotting to overthrow the tyrant leader and his camarilla.

Did you know? "Camarilla" is borrowed from Spanish and is the diminutive of "camara," which traces to the Late Latin "camera" and means "room"; a "camarilla," then, is literally a "small room." Political cliques and plotters are likely to meet in small rooms (generally with the door closed) as they hatch their schemes, and, by 1834, "camarilla" was being used in English for such closed-door groups of scheming advisers. The word is relatively rare in formal English prose, but it still finds occasional use in news stories. Some other descendants of the Latin "camera" include "camera," "comrade," "camaraderie," and "bicameral."

Mini DNA replicator costs $10

Not just for Third World countries. Click title for article

The Word of the Day

brackish \BRACK-ish\ adjective
*1 : somewhat salty
2 a : not appealing to the taste b : repulsive

Example sentence: Water is often brackish and undrinkable at points where freshwater rivers flow into the sea.

Did you know? When the word "brackish" first appeared in English in the 1500s, it simply meant "salty," as did its Dutch ancestor "brak." Then, as now, brackish water could simply be a mixture of saltwater and freshwater. Since that time, however, "brackish" has developed the additional meanings of "unpalatable" or "distasteful" -- presumably because of the undrinkable quality of saltwater. "The brackish water that we drink / Creeps with a loathsome slime, / And the bitter bread they weigh in scales / Is full of chalk and lime." As this use from Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" illustrates, brackish water can also include things other than salt that make it unpleasant to drink.

They called it X for unknown

"Yet the X chromosome does much more than help specify an animal’s reproductive plumbing. As scientists who study the chromosome lately have learned, the X is a rich repository of genes vital to brain development and could hold the key to the evolution of our particularly corrugated cortex. Moreover, the X chromosome behaves unlike any of the other chromosomes of the body — unlike little big-man Y, certainly, but also unlike our 22 other pairs of chromosomes, the self-satisfied autosomes that constitute the rest of our genome, of the complete DNA kit packed into every cell that we carry. It is a supple, switchbacking, multitasking gumby doll patch of the genome; and the closer you look, the more Cirque du Soleil it appears." click title for article

Duck Dicks

In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia

By CARL ZIMMER

LITCHFIELD, Conn. — “This guy’s the champion,” said Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, leaning over the nether regions of a duck — a Meller’s duck from Madagascar, to be specific — and carefully coaxing out his phallus.

The duck was quietly resting upside-down against the stomach of Ian Gereg, an aviculturist here at the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Sanctuary. Dr. Brennan, a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University and the University of Sheffield, visits the sanctuary every two weeks to measure the phalluses of six species of ducks.

When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.

The anatomy of ducks is especially bizarre considering that 97 percent of all bird species have no phallus at all. Most male birds just deliver their sperm through an opening. Dr. Brennan is investigating how this sexual wonder of the world came to be.

Part of the answer, she has discovered, has gone overlooked for decades. Male ducks may have such extreme genitals because the females do too. The birds are locked in an evolutionary struggle for reproductive success.

Dr. Brennan was oblivious to bird phalluses until 1999. While working in a Costa Rican forest, she observed a pair of birds called tinamous mating. “They became unattached, and I saw this huge thing hanging off of him,” she said. “I could not believe it. It became one of those questions I wrote down: why do these males have this huge phallus?”

A bird phallus is similar — but not identical — to a mammalian penis. Most of the time it remains invisible, curled up inside a bird’s body. During mating, however, it fills with lymphatic fluid and expands into a long, corkscrew shape. The bird’s sperm travels on the outside of the phallus, along a spiral-shaped groove, into the female bird.

To learn about this peculiar organ, Dr. Brennan decided she would have to make careful dissections of male tinamous. In 2005 she traveled to the University of Sheffield to learn the art of bird dissection from Tim Birkhead, an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Birkhead had her practice on some male ducks from a local farm.

Gazing at the enormous organs, she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before.

“So what does the female look like?” she said. “Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.”

The lower oviduct (the equivalent of the vagina in birds) is typically a simple tube. But when Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. “There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals,” she said.

Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before. Pondering it, Dr. Brennan came to doubt the conventional explanation for how duck phalluses evolved.

In some species of ducks, a female bonds for a season with a male. But she is also harassed by other males that force her to mate. “It’s nasty business. Females are often killed or injured,” Dr. Brennan said.

Species with more forced mating tend to have longer phalluses. That link led some scientists to argue that the duck phallus was the result of males’ competing with one another to fertilize eggs.

“Basically, you get a bigger phallus to put your sperm in farther than the other males,” Dr. Brennan said.

Dr. Brennan realized that scientists had made this argument without looking at the female birds. Perhaps, she wondered, the two sexes were coevolving, with elaborate lower oviducts driving the evolution of long phalluses.

To test this idea, Dr. Brennan traveled to Alaska. Many species of waterfowl breed there, with a wide range of mating systems. Working with Kevin McCracken of the University of Alaska and his colleagues, she caught and dissected 16 species of ducks and geese, comparing the male and female anatomy.

If a male bird had a long phallus, the female tended to have a more elaborate lower oviduct. And if the male had a small phallus, the female tended to have a simple oviduct. “The correlation was incredibly tight,” Dr. Brennan said. “When you dissected one of the birds, it was really easy to predict what the other sex was going to look like.”

Dr. Brennan and her colleagues are publishing their study today in the journal PLOS One.

Dr. McCracken, who discovered the longest known bird phallus on an Argentine duck in 2001, is struck by the fact that it was a woman who discovered the complexity of female birds. “Maybe it’s the male bias we all have,” he said. “It’s just been out there, waiting to be discovered.”

Dr. Brennan argues that elaborate female duck anatomy evolves as a countermeasure against aggressive males. “Once they choose a male, they’re making the best possible choice, and that’s the male they want siring their offspring,” she said. “They don’t want the guy flying in from who knows where. It makes sense that they would develop a defense.”

Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it. “It only makes sense as a barrier,” she said.

To support her argument, Dr. Brennan notes studies on some species that have found that forced matings make up about a third of all matings. Yet only 3 percent of the offspring are the result of forced matings. “To me, it means these females are successful with this strategy,” she said.

Dr. Brennan suspects that when the females of a species evolved better defenses, they drove the evolution of male phalluses. “The males have to step up to produce a longer or more flexible phallus,” she said.

Other scientists have documented a similar coevolution of genitals in flies and other invertebrates. But Dr. Brennan’s study is the clearest example of this arms race in vertebrates.

“It’s rare to find something so blatantly obvious in the female anatomy,” Dr. Brennan said. “I’m sure it’s going on in other vertebrates, but it’s probably going in ways that are more subtle and harder to figure out.”

To test her hypothesis, Dr. Brennan plans to team up with a biomechanics expert to build a transparent model of a female duck. She wants to see exactly what a duck phallus does during mating.

Dr. Brennan also hopes to find more clues by studying phalluses on living ducks. At the waterfowl sanctuary in Litchfield, she is spending the year tracking the growth and disappearance of phalluses in ducks and geese. Hardly anything is known about how the phallus waxes and wanes — not to mention why.

“It may be easier to regrow it than to keep it healthy,” Dr. Brennan said. “But those are some of the things I may be able to find out. When you’re doing something that so little is known about, you can’t really predict what’s going to happen.”

The Word of the Day

usance \YOO-zuns\ noun
1 : firmly established and generally accepted practice or procedure : usage
2 : use, employment
*3 : interest
4 : the time allowed by custom for payment of a bill of exchange in foreign commerce

Example sentence: "Make an investment of any spare monies as may render some usance." (Lord Byron)

Did you know? "Usance" was borrowed from Latin in the 14th century as a word meaning "habit" or "custom." In the late 16th century, its worth was compounded when it became a word for both the lending of money at interest and the interest charged. Both meanings were known to Shakespeare when he was writing _The Merchant of Venice_ (1596). "He lends out money gratis, and brings down [t]he rate of usance here with us in Venice," says the usurer Shylock of the protagonist Antonio. And, later in the play, Shylock tells how Antonio has "rated ... about [his] moneys and [his] usances." Unexplainably, the currency of these uses plummeted shortly after appearing in the play, only to be revived in the 19th century.